Saturday, August 11, 2012

Historical Fiction

Amy knew her father meant it. She could say no if she wanted. But this marriage would make everything all right. They could put all the trouble she had caused behind them. Everyone would be happy again.

Everyone except her.

“Sentence of Marriage” is the first book in the three-volume “Promises to Keep”.

In nineteenth century New Zealand, there are few choices for a farm girl like Amy. Her life seems mapped out for her by the time she is twelve. Amy dreams of an exciting life in the world beyond her narrow boundaries. But it is the two people who come to the farm from outside the valley who change her life forever, and Amy learns the high cost of making the wrong choice.

King Vieri's war against the lands of Pawelon rages into its tenth year, and with the kingdom's holy savior, his son Caio, en route to the fighting in the storied canyon, victory ought to come soon. Feeling abandoned by his god, King Vieri forces young Caio to lead his army to victory.

The Black One, Lord Danato, tortures Lucia with nightly visions promising another ten years of bloodshed. She can no longer tell the difference between the waking world and Danato's nightmares. Lucia knows the black god too well; he entered her bed and dreams when she was ten.

As the epic battles rage, Lucia struggles to understand the messages of The Black One, while Caio wrestles with his conscience: Can someone who only wants to heal the world bring himself to kill another man?

http://amzn.to/P0eefDThe future stretches out in front of Sarah Dobbs like the pure blue Texas sky. Leaving the past behind in Philadelphia, mail-order bride Sarah arrives in San Antonio ready to greet her groom, Austin Canfield, a man she has never met but whose letters have won her heart from afar. But there is one problem--he has died. And Sarah cannot go back East.

As Sarah tries to reconcile herself to a future that is drastically changed, Austin's brother, Clay, struggles with his own muddled plans. Though he dislikes working on the family ranch and longs for a different life, Clay is driven to avenge his brother's death. But something between them is growing and neither Clay nor Sarah is ready to admit it.

Book 1 of the Texas Dreams series, Paper Roses will sweep readers into the Hill Country with a tale of love and loss, closed doors and beautiful possibilities that will leave them wanting more.

http://amzn.to/PaX9ARWhen she was a child, the author of When Women Were Warriors happily identified with all the male heroes she read about in stories that began, "Once upon a time, a young man went out to seek his fortune." But she would have been delighted to discover even one story like that with a female protagonist. Since she never did find the story she was looking for all those years ago, she decided to write it.

In Book I of the trilogy, Tamras arrives in Merin’s house to begin her apprenticeship as a warrior, but her small stature causes many, including Tamras herself, to doubt that she will ever become a competent swordswoman. To make matters worse, the Lady Merin assigns her the position of companion, little more than a personal servant, to a woman who came to Merin’s house, seemingly out of nowhere, the previous winter, and this stranger wants nothing to do with Tamras.

http://amzn.to/MMmNpR“Miriam Minger is a master storyteller who illustrates the full gamut of emotions felt by her characters. Emotions so strong that you are pulled into the pages and into their lives.” – Inside Romance

When Maddie Fraser’s father was killed fighting for Bonnie Prince Charles, the spirited Scottish lass swore to avenge his death. Hooded and disguised, she led a series of daring raids against the forces of the Crown—vowing to love no man until the English invaders were driven from her native soil.

Captain Garrett Marshall was entrusted with the capture of the mysterious brigand called “Black Jack.” But the sensuous, azure-eyed beauty hidden beneath the bandit’s manly garb tested Garrett’s loyalty to his King. Inflamed by a desire he could not ignore, the handsome officer would wed his bewitching enemy to save her from the gallows. But first he’d have to quell her hatred…and conquer her heart.

http://amzn.to/ORiDyyWith genteel grace and quiet fortitude, Emma Garrett presides over Hill House, a stately boardinghouse in the canal village of Candlewood, New York. She finds her purpose in caring for her guests, ministering to them with a generous dose of wisdom and humor. But when a "runaway grandma" lands on her doorstep, Emma's need to fix every wrong places her in the midst of a family feud.

Emma's concerns heighten when her attorney, Zachary Breckenwith, delivers life-changing news, leaving Emma reeling from the implications. With her future suddenly uncertain, Emma longs to restore the peace of Hill House--for her guests and within her own heart.

http://amzn.to/S9AHVrWhen eighteen year old Madeline accepted a position at Barnesfield Hall as companion to Lady Grey, she expected to encounter gracious surroundings and the quiet of the English countryside. Absent its master, Barnesfield Hall offered little to contradict her expectations, but when Lord Grey arrived, Madeline swiftly became aware that decadent and shameful secrets lurked just below the genteel surface of this eighteenth century country idyll.

The year is 1715 and the Jacobite Rebellion continues in the Scottish Highlands.

He is Alexander MacLean, a fearsome Highland warrior fighting for his true Scottish King. She is Elizabeth Curtis, a beautiful Englishwoman who wears the scarlet uniform of an English soldier and wields a sword like a seasoned fighter on the battlefield.

Enemies meet, and passions collide...in THE REBEL

The Rebel is a short story of 7000 words (approximately 28 pages). It first appeared in print in the MAMMOTH BOOK OF SCOTTISH ROMANCE, edited by Trisha Tele

http://amzn.to/RAsvA8When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.

http://amzn.to/R02igZNovel by Charles Dickens, published both serially and in book form in 1859. The story is set in the late 18th century against the background of the French Revolution. Although Dickens borrowed from Thomas Carlyle's history, The French Revolution, for his sprawling tale of London and revolutionary Paris, the novel offers more drama than accuracy. The scenes of large-scale mob violence are especially vivid, if superficial in historical understanding. The complex plot involves Sydney Carton's sacrifice of his own life on behalf of his friends Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette. While political events drive the story, Dickens takes a decidedly antipolitical tone, lambasting both aristocratic tyranny and revolutionary excess--the latter memorably caricatured in Madame Defarge, who knits beside the guillotine. The book is perhaps best known for its opening lines, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," and for Carton's last speech, in which he says of his replacing Darnay in a prison cell, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known." -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

http://amzn.to/NUrrCgIt is late summer in the year 1270 and England is as weary as its aging king, Henry III. Although the Simon de Montfort rebellion is over, the smell of death still hangs like smoke over the land. Even in the small priory of Tyndal on the remote East Anglian coast, the monks and nuns of the Order of Fontevraud long for a return to tranquil routine. Their hopes are dashed, however, when the young and inexperienced Eleanor of Wynethorpe is appointed their new prioress over someone of their own choosing. Nor are Eleanor's own prayers for a peaceful transition answered. Only a day after her arrival, a brutally murdered monk is found in the cloister gardens, and Brother Thomas, a young priest with a troubled past, arrives to bring her a more personal grief. Now she must not only struggle to gain the respect of her terrified and resentful flock but also cope with violence, lust and greed in a place dedicated to love and peace.

http://amzn.to/Mog89PIn the harsh Scottish highlands of 1565, superstition and treachery threaten a truce between rival clans. It's a weak truce at first, bound only by an arranged engagement between Anne MacGregor and Niall Campbell-the heirs of the feuding families.

While Niall wrestles with his suspicions about a traitor in his clan, Anne's actions do not go unnoticed. And as accusations of witchcraft abound, the strong and sometimes callous Campbell heir must fight for Anne's safety among disconcerted clan members. Meanwhile his own safety in threatened with the ever-present threat of someone who wants him dead.Will Niall discover the traitor's identity in time? Can Anne find a way to fit into her new surroundings? Will the two learn to love each other despite the conflict? With a perfect mix of a burgeoning romance and thrilling suspense, this book is historical fiction at its best.

http://amzn.to/NUrCNK18-yr old Sam Carson is busy training and breeding thoroughbreds with his father when his world is shattered by a shotgun blast from the darkness. Searching in the city for a stranger, he is forced to play a deadly game--Sam must lure the killer into battle by becoming an easy target.

In the year A.D. 9, three Roman Legions under Quintilius Varus were betrayed by the Germanic war chief, Arminius, and destroyed in the forest known as Teutoburger Wald. Six years later Rome is finally ready to unleash Her vengeance on the barbarians. The Emperor Tiberius has sent his adopted son, Germanicus Caesar, into Germania with an army of forty-thousand legionaries. The come not on a mission of conquest, but one of annihilation. With them is a young legionary named Artorius. For him the war is a personal vendetta; a chance to avenge his brother, who was killed in Teutoburger Wald. In Germania Arminius knows the Romans are coming. He realizes that the only way to fight the legions is through deceit, cunning, and plenty of well-placed brute force. In truth he is leery of Germanicus, knowing that he was trained to be a master of war by the Emperor himself. The entire Roman Empire held its collective breath as Germanicus and Arminius faced each other in what would become the most brutal and savage campaign the world had seen in a generation; a campaign that could only end in a holocaust of fire and blood.

http://amzn.to/MogbCJVenice, 1731. Opera is the popular entertainment of the day and the castrati are its reigning divas. Tito Amato, mutilated as a boy to preserve his enchanting soprano voice, returns to the city of his birth with his friend Felice, a castrato whose voice has failed.

Disaster strikes Tito’s opera premier when the singer loses one beloved friend to poison and another to unjust accusation and arrest. Alarmed that the merchant-aristocrat who owns the theater is pressing the authorities to close the case, Tito races the executioner to find the real killer. The possible suspects could people the cast of one of his operas: a libertine nobleman and his spurned wife, a jealous soprano, an ambitious composer, and a patrician family bent on the theater’s ruin.

With carnival gaiety swirling around him and rousing Venetian passions to an ominous crescendo, Tito finds that the most astonishing secrets lurk behind the masks of his own family and friends.

http://amzn.to/NtUz3TThis epic adventure begins in England in the twelfth century. It covers several traumatic months in the life of Winston Tabor, a young nobleman, who is well known in his village for being an irresponsible drunkard. When his father is murdered and he is framed for the crime, Winston's world is turned upside down. His life becomes a whirlwind of action and adventure as he seeks to prove his innocence and avenge the murder of his father. To fulfill his goal, he duels with swordsmen, battles on horseback, and earns the honor of knighthood. At the same time he must find a way to come to grips with his unrelenting desire for ale, which has controlled him for most of his life. Last of all, he is compelled to prove to a beautiful young peasant girl, who comes to own his heart, that he is worthy of her love. Will he succeed in his quest, or will he die with his last breath reeking of ale?